Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Faouzi Ayoub, 47, a senior commander with the Lebanese militant group, died last week while fighting to help Syria’s government, according to a Twitter account tied to Hizballah and news media reports. FBI Detroit Special Agent David Porter told the Free Press the agency is aware of the reports, but couldn't immediately confirm or deny them.

A Twitter account tied to Hizballah tweeted two photos of Ayoub in military gear, one of them last week, describing him as a martyr who was killed in battle.

Born in Lebanon, Ayoub lived in Canada, married a Detroit woman and then lived in Dearborn for several years. He was indicted in 2009 in Detroit for attempting to use a forged U.S. passport to enter Israel to conduct a bombing on behalf of Hizballah, according to federal prosecutors. Hizballah, which is a Shi’a Muslim group, has been fighting in Syria over the past year to help Syrian President Bashar Assad battle opposition forces, who are mostly Sunni Muslims. Ayoub is one of only 30 people on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Ayoub is the third person who has lived in the U.S. and was reportedly killed in Syria’s three-year-old war. The other two are Nicole Mansfield of Flint, killed in May 2013, and a suicide bomber from Florida.

Ayoub’s death comes as U.S. officials have been increasingly expressing concern about people from the West going to fight in Syria. In March, the FBI arrested a 22-year-old Dearborn Heights man, Mohammad Hassan Hamdan, accusing him of planning to travel to Syria to fight for Hizballah. Visiting Detroit in April, FBI national director James Comey expressed concerned that Syria is drawing radicals who might pose terrorist threats.

Ayoub has a history of terrorism, according to prosecutors and experts.

He was convicted in Romania in 1986 for trying to hijack an Iraqi airplane set to take off from Bucharest, according to Senate testimony by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Ayoub’s partner escaped being captured and crashed the jet in Saudi Arabia, killing 60, according to Canadian journalist Stewart Bell, whose book “Cold Terror” included sections on Ayoub.

Ayoub entered Canada in 1988, sponsored by his uncle through a program for Lebanese refugees, according to Bell. He became a Canadian citizen in the 1990s. After he married the Detroit woman, he lived in Dearborn.

In October 2000, Ayoub, using the alias Frank Mariano Boschi, tried to use a counterfeit passport to enter Israel to carry out a terrorist attack for Hizballah.

In June 2002, Israeli forces arrested Ayoub during a raid in Hebron, a city in the West Bank, accusing him of being a senior fighter for Hizballah.

In 2004, Israel released him in a prisoner exchage with Hizballah for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers and a businessman.

Around the time his 2009 indictment in Detroit was unsealed in 2011, the FBI placed Ayoub on their Most Wanted Terrorists list.